ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the changing nature borders is key to understanding the complex relationship between borders and cosmopolitanism and outlines how borders can be considered to be cosmopolitan workshops as well as cosmopolitan in themselves. It describes 'borderwork', 'multiperspectivalism', the 'politics of fixity' and 'connectivity’, and explores Beck's idea that borders can be productively thought of as 'mobile patterns'. The chapter deals with some reflections on studying borders in conjunction with cosmopolitanism via a critique of Beck's approach. According to traditional logic borders exist to divide one country from another and the possession of these mechanisms of territorial control is a mark of state sovereignty. Placing border perspectives as central components of cosmopolitan thinking has several important consequences, not least of which is the centrality of borders to understanding the world: borders are increasingly important in the study of political and social transformations.
